| The War on Terror Is a Hoax 
By Paul Craig Roberts
According to US government propaganda, terrorist cells are
spread throughout America,
making it necessary for the government to spy on all Americans and violate most
other constitutional protections. Among President Bush’s last words as he left
office was the warning that America
would soon be struck again by Muslim terrorists.
If America were
infected with terrorists, we would not need the government to tell us. We would
know it from events. As there are no events, the US government substitutes
warnings in order to keep alive the fear that causes the public to accept
pointless wars, the infringement of civil liberty, national ID cards, and
inconveniences and harassments when they fly.
The most obvious indication that there are no terrorist
cells is that not a single neocon has been assassinated.
I do not approve of assassinations, and am ashamed of my
country’s government for engaging in political assassination. The US and Israel
have set a very bad example for al Qaeda to follow.
The US
deals with al Qaeda and Taliban by assassinating their leaders, and Israel deals
with Hamas by assassinating its leaders. It is reasonable to assume that al
Qaeda would deal with the instigators and leaders of America’s
wars in the Middle East in the same way.
Today every al Qaeda member is aware of the complicity of
neoconservatives in the death and devastation inflicted on Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Lebanon and Gaza. Moreover, neocons are highly visible
and are soft targets compared to Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. Neocons have been
identified in the media for years, and as everyone knows, multiple listings of
their names are available online.
Neocons do not have Secret Service protection. Dreadful to
contemplate, but it would be child’s play for al Qaeda to assassinate any and
every neocon. Yet, neocons move around freely, a good indication that the US
does not have a terrorist problem.
If, as neocons constantly allege, terrorists can smuggle
nuclear weapons or dirty bombs into the US with which to wreak havoc upon
our cities, terrorists can acquire weapons with which to assassinate any neocon
or former government official.
Yet, the neocons, who are the Americans most hated by
Muslims, remain unscathed.
The “war on terror” is a hoax that fronts for American
control of oil pipelines, the profits of the military-security complex, the
assault on civil liberty by fomenters of a police state, and Israel’s territorial expansion.
There were no al Qaeda in Iraq
until the Americans brought them there by invading and overthrowing Saddam
Hussein, who kept al Qaeda out of Iraq. The Taliban is not a
terrorist organization, but a movement attempting to unify Afghanistan
under Muslim law. The only Americans threatened by the Taliban are the
Americans Bush sent to Afghanistan
to kill Taliban and to impose a puppet state on the Afghan people.
Hamas is the democratically elected government of Palestine, or what little remains of Palestine
after Israel’s
illegal annexations. Hamas is a terrorist organization in the same sense that
the Israeli government and the US
government are terrorist organizations. In an effort to bring Hamas under
Israeli hegemony, Israel
employs terror bombing and assassinations against Palestinians. Hamas replies
to the Israeli terror with homemade and ineffectual rockets.
Hezbollah represents the Shi’ites of southern Lebanon, another area in the Middle East that Israel
seeks for its territorial expansion.
The US
brands Hamas and Hezbollah “terrorist organizations” for no other reason than
the US is on Israel’s side
of the conflict. There is no objective basis for the US Department of State’s
“finding” that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations. It is merely a
propagandistic declaration.
Americans and Israelis do not call their bombings of
civilians terror. What Americans and Israelis call terror is the response of
oppressed people who are stateless because their countries are ruled by puppets
loyal to the oppressors. These people, dispossessed of their own countries,
have no State Departments, Defense Departments, seats in the United Nations, or
voices in the mainstream media. They can submit to foreign hegemony or resist
by the limited means available to them.
The fact that Israel and the United States carry on endless
propaganda to prevent this fundamental truth from being realized indicates that
it is Israel and the US that are in the wrong and the Palestinians, Lebanese,
Iraqis, and Afghans who are being wronged.
The retired American generals who serve as war propagandists
for Fox “News” are forever claiming that Iran arms the Iraqi and Afghan
insurgents and Hamas. But where are the arms? To deal with American tanks,
insurgents have to construct homemade explosive devices out of artillery
shells. After six years of conflict the insurgents still have no weapon against
the American helicopter gunships. Contrast this “arming” with the weaponry the US
supplied to the Afghans three decades ago when they were fighting to drive out
the Soviets.
The films of Israel’s
murderous assault on Gaza
show large numbers of Gazans fleeing from Israeli bombs or digging out the dead
and maimed, and none of these people are armed. A person would think that by
now every Palestinian would be armed, every man, woman, and child. Yet, all the
films of the Israeli attack show an unarmed population. Hamas has to construct
homemade rockets that are little more than a sign of defiance. If Hamas were
armed by Iran, Israel’s assault on Gaza
would have cost Israel
its helicopter gunships, its tanks, and hundreds of lives of its soldiers.
Hamas is a small organization armed with small caliber
rifles incapable of penetrating body armor. Hamas is unable to stop small bands
of Israeli settlers from descending on West Bank Palestinian villages, driving
out the Palestinians, and appropriating their land.
The great mystery is: why after 60 years of oppression are
the Palestinians still an unarmed people? Clearly, the Muslim countries are
complicit with Israel and
the US
in keeping the Palestinians unarmed.
The unsupported assertion that Iran supplies sophisticated arms to
the Palestinians is like the unsupported assertion that Saddam Hussein had
weapons of mass destruction. These assertions are propagandistic justifications
for killing Arab civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure in order to
secure US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS was assistant secretary
of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was associate editor of The
Wall Street Journal editorial page and contributing editor of National Review. Roberts
can be contacted at [email protected].
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(Issue
# 1,
January 5 & 12, 2009)
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